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Snuff
Snuff is the 39th novel by Terry Pratchett in the Discworld series after I Shall Wear Midnight. It went on sale on Thursday 13th October 2011 and was the third-fastest-selling novel in the United Kingdom since records began, having sold over 55,000 copies in the first three days. It is the eighth City Watch story and is based largely around Commander Sir Sam Vimes. Pratchett emphasised that the word 'snuff' has "at least two meanings". It takes its title from the nasal tobacco used by the upper classes (a pinch of snuff) as well as 'snuff' meaning to exterminate someone. The Discworld snuff is called "Double Thunder". Plot In Snuff, '' Commander Sam Vimes is forced by his wife, Lady Sybil, to take a holiday with their son, Young Sam, at her family's mansion Crundells. After a short time of enjoying his holiday, he discovers that the rural community has a dark past with the resident goblins, humanoid lifeforms that live in caves nearby. Vimes finds out that the son of Lord Rust has been enslaving goblins to force them to work on his tobacco plantations in Howondaland, allowing him to manufacture cigars cheaply that are then smuggled to Ankh-Morpork. After teaming up with the local constable, a young man called Upshot, Vimes manages to arrest those responsible for the crime. In the end, thanks to his wife's organisational skills and powers of persuasion, goblins are recognised as citizens by all major nations and rulers. Rust's son is disinherited and exiled to Fourecks, where Lord Vetinari assures an eye will be kept on him. Themes One of the recurring themes in the novel is the division between the "upstairs" and the "downstairs" crowd - privilege and the sense of entitlement that goes with being born into the right circle vs the hoi polloi. In ''Unseen Academicals, ''Pratchett uses the analogy of the crab bucket, whereby any crab trying to escape the cooking pot, is dragged back down by his fellow crabs, much the way ordinary people will believe lies and innuendos about their fellows and discourage them from bettering themselves rather than see them escape the cooking pot and rise above their peers. In this novel, Pratchett continues to explore the divide and the expectations of the upper and lower classes. The murder committed by the Marquis and his flight into self-imposed exile is very reminiscent of the Roundworld case of Lord Lucan who in 1974 tried to murder his estranged wife one dark night. Incredibly, he got the wrong woman, and bludgeoned his children's nanny to death, then fled in panic. The British nobility closed ranks in protecting one of their own, a less than edifying example of their sense of ingrained privilege and of being above the law. The police claimed to have tried their hardest to crack the case, but were in part deterred by a sense of social expectations - ie, you cannot haul in relatives of royalty and give them the same sort of robust questioning you wouldn't think twice about giving to an Irish bombing suspect, a person of colour or a striking miner. Comment was made that "It was only the nanny, for goodness sake!" and the British nobility made it clear (as a challenge to any authority that believed it could treat them like commoners) that they knew perfectly well where Lucan was, but were not going to tell. Lord Lucan's wife stated in an interview that she believed he committed suicide in 1974. However, it was said that in 2011, a criminal who fled justice in 1974 and was covertly helped out by cash handouts from other nobles died in exile, possibly in Australia or New Zealand. In a similar vein, the maid servants who turn their faces to the wall when meeting one of the 'upstairs' residents is another example of the privileged nobility and the commoners who are expected to be invisible. This is another example of Pratchett's obscure plot detail culled from his extensive research of Roundworld events. At Warwick Castle, there was a set of rules for servants, including how to behave in the presence of their 'betters', which requires them to turn and face the wall and try to look invisible. The official Warwick Castle reason given is so that the servants' superiors don't have to acknowledge them, rather than to protect them against the advances of randy aristocrats (the Discworld reason), which as 'inferiors' they might have a hard time resisting. Popular References Vetinari says that he has "no particular objection to people taking substances that make them ...see little dancing purple fairies -or even their god if it comes to that. It's their brain after all, and society can have no claim on it, providing they're not operating heavy machinery at the time. However, to sell drugs to trolls that actually make their heads explode is simply murder, the capital crime." Pratchett is likely thinking of the fentanyl crisis in making this comment which is particularly telling in present day Roundworld where fentanyl is killing thousands of unsuspecting recreational drug users and the sellers seem to be acting with relative impunity. Vetineri is having his usual contest over the crossword in the Ankh-Morpork Times (crossword and paper a takeoff on the London or New York Times). The word 'cucumiform' is in fact the real word for 'shaped like a cucumber or squash' but the clue is the kind of easy bad pun clue that a true crossword puzzle maker would not use in a Times crossword, hence his comment, "I thumb my nose at you, madam!" Thumbing one's nose is a gesture of contempt. Alternately, he could be happy he has solved the puzzle and is thumbing his nose at the crossword maker for thinking he wouldn't be able to solve it. The origin of the expression itself is unknown but was a popular display of contempt in the 1920. Romeo bites his thumb to show his contempt for his rival in Shakespeare's ''Romeo and Juliet '' so there may be some connection to the two actions over time. Venieri says to Drumknott, "In short, Drumknott, a certain amount of harmless banditry amongst the lower classes is to be smiled upon ..... but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime ...if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?" Pratchett is getting at the heart of modern laissez faire capitalism in today's world in this line; a world in which laws like the "three strikes rule" in the USA send a person to prison indefinitely for petty crime or possession of marijuana while the junk bond traders, corrupt banking executives and unscrupulous Wall Street Brokers involved in massive multi-million dollar fraudulent thefts are treated like heroes by the courts and government alike. They are given a slap on the wrist at worst (no need to incarcerate because they are 'not a threat to society') or their companies get government bailouts at best, even though the impact of their actions on the country and economy are far worse than that of the petty thief. Captain Haddock is on an exchange in Quirm and enjoying the 'avec'. Pratchett mentions 'avec' in Unseen Academicals where the night cook Glenda Sugarbean says "You're giving them Avec. Nearly every dish has got Avec in it, but stuff with Avec in the name is an acquired taste." "Avec" is french for "with." Pratchett is poking fun at ostentatious restaurants with their menus written in french, even when they are serving standard fare, in ''Unseen Academicals. ''In ''Snuff, Quirm ''dining really is the equivalent of French cuisine. Vimes' discussion of who owns the fish in the stream might seem strange to someone from North America where you can buy a fishing license to let you fish wherever you want in fresh, or alternately salt, water (parks and the like excluded in some cases). In Britain the property owner owns the rights to the fish in his section of river (as Vimes points out, as long as the fish stay in his section and don't wander off to the neighbours) and can prevent anyone from fishing there or can charge a fee for fishing on his 'river'. In fact, England and Wales landowners have been successful in preventing other waterway users from "trespassing" on their sections of the river, thus limiting formal right of access to English rivers by canoeists, kayakers as well as people who simply want to swim to a mere 3% of English and Welsh rivers: 1,400 out of 42,700 miles. Vimes comments regarding urns and art juxtaposed with the naked women is a common theme in Pratchett's works; a reference to the idea of when does nudity become art and not pornography or simply naken bodies. Bowler hats on the gamekeepers has an origin in Roundworld, where they were in fact originally devised by Edward Coke of Leicester as practical wear for his gamekeepers to protect their heads from low branches when they were out patrolling the estate on horseback. In confusing their wearers with bailiffs, Vimes is perhaps thinking of the sort of hard men employed by Lord deWorde to remove his embarrassing son William in the climactic scene at the end of ''The Truth, who are described as wearing bowlers and as the sort of hard men every Lord finds it useful to employ to smooth such distasteful moments - including the foreshadowed events of this novel. The line, "the rumble of the honey wagons as Harry King's night soil collectors went about the business of business" is a reference to the what is now called 'fecal sludge' - a euphemism for human feces collected from cesspools, privies, pail closets, pit latrines, privy middens, septic tanks, etc. It was removed from the immediate area, usually at night, by workers employed in this trade. Sometimes it could be transported out of towns and sold on as a fertilizer. In Roundworld, a 'honeywagon' is the slang term for a "vacuum truck" for collecting and carrying human excreta. In Discworld it is likely horse drawn. Sybil introduces Vimes to a widowed friend of hers, Lady Ariadne, who has six spinster daughters who live in full expectation of the acknowledged truth that 'a man, once in possession of an independent income and a country estate, will surely be looking for a wife' - an obvious reference to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. One of them is even called Jane, and, not surprisingly, she is the strange self-sufficient one who closely observes the world around her and wants to become a writer. Ariadne means 'most holy' in Greek. In Greek mythology, Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos. She fell in love with Theseus and helped him to escape the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, but was later abandoned by him. Eventually she married the god Dionysus. Hermione, the youngest daughter who has brought same to the family by becoming a lumberjack is an obvious reference to the famous Monty Python sketch - in that case the main character bringing shame by 'coming out' as an effeminate or gay lumberjack. The hermit in the woods who, like his father, grandfather and forefathers before that, practices celibacy is Pratchett's joke at the whole genre since obviously you couldn't have children if you were celibate. Pratchett explains his joke (unnecessarily) and adds that every job is entitled to two weeks vacation (something that Vimes disagrees with since he doesn't want to be on vacation in the country and away from the Watch). The game of crockett, is clearly a reference to Roundworld's croquet. It is called 'the game of games and king of games' and is played on village greens over several days and governed by the sort of arcane laws that made Sam Vimes' eyes glaze over while a keen player was earnestly explaining them to him. Jackson Fieldfair, a student who is now Bishop of Quirm, is said to have taken his mallet in both hands and given the ball a gentle tap...the origin of crockett. The sexual innuendo is obvious, particularly given the following.... Major Rust's continual expression, "What, What!" is actually not a question but is a corruption of 'wot' which is the 1st and 3rd person singular of 'wit' - old English for 'to know'. So when used at the end of a sentence like Rust, or PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster it means, "don't you know". Its first known usage was in the 14th century and today it is generally used as a caricature of British upper class "snobbish" speech. St Onan's Theological College ''leads to the interesting question as to the sort of theology this college teaches, and how on the Discworld Onan got his sainthood, since in the Bible, Onan is struck dead by the LORD for "spilling his seed on the ground", an action taken by generations of theological commentators to be masturbation and referred to as the 'sin of Onan'. St. Onan's is located in Ham-on-Rye, a play on English place names that combine the town's name with the river beside which it is located (such as Hay on Wye) and the kind of bacon sandwich Vimes loves but can't eat because his wife forbids it. The Rye is a river in Ireland, a tributary of the Liffey. Vimes refers to the country folk or barn dance 'Strip the Willow' as 'Strip the Widow' a descriptive malaprop. In a reference to [[Thud!|T''hud!]] and the Summoning Dark. Sam discovers his arm is itching, the arm marked by the quasi-demonic entity he fought and defeated with the aid of the Guarding Dark. When the goblin Stinky tries to articulate his people's need for just ice (''justice), Vimes has a vision of a dark cave and the desire for "terrible endless vengeance" which he puts down to Stinky having touched him on the scar left by the Summoning Dark. He comments that "''while all coppers must have a bit of villain in them, nobody wants to walk around with a bit of demon as a tattoo." Later evens suggest that perhaps by defeating the Summoning Dark in Thud!, it is now working for him or at least marked him in some broader way than just the scar. He can see in the dark as well as any deep-down dwarf and he meets the Summoning Dark in dreams and it treats him with respect. The parallels with the 'dark mark' tatoo that Voldemort's supporters have on their arms (and with sting or burn and are used for summoning) is obvious and there can be no doubt that Pratchett was aware of JK Rowling's Harry Potter novels and this symbolism. Throughout the novel there are various references to Sybil's ancester Woolsthorpe Ramkin sitting under the apple tree when an apple falls on his head. This echo Sir Isaac Newton, who was living at his ancestral home, Woolsthorpe Manor, when a falling apple led him to the theory of gravity. In Woolsthorpe Ramkin's case this get slightly confused with Sir Isaac's law of motion "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". In Discworld this leads to him setting someone else under the apple tree so that he can observe an apple rising into space after the first apple falls to the ground - the equal and opposite reaction. Category:Novels